The Bethesda Blog offers details on recent indications that a settlement is at hand in the legal battle between Bethesda Softworks and Interplay over rights to make an MMORPG based on the Fallout franchise. According to this, Bethesda will pay Interplay $2 million, and Interplay no longer owns any Fallout rights aside from two more years of selling their three previous Fallout games:

Under the terms of the settlement, the license granted to Interplay to develop the Fallout MMO is null and void, and all rights granted to Interplay to develop a Fallout MMO revert back to Bethesda, effective immediately. Interplay has no ongoing right to use the Fallout brand or any Fallout intellectual property for any game development. ZeniMax will pay Interplay $2 million as consideration in the settlement, each party will bear its own costs of the litigation, and Bethesda will continue to own all Fallout intellectual property rights. Interplay will be permitted to continue to sell the original Fallout ®Tactics, Fallout® and Fallout® 2 PC games through December 2013, after which time all rights to market those games revert to and become the sole property of Bethesda. Under the original agreement pursuant to which Bethesda had acquired the Fallout property, Interplay was granted certain merchandising rights to sell those original Fallout games, but those merchandising rights will now expire on December 31, 2013.

The Half Elf wrote on Jan 9, 2012, 20:01:I guess I am missing something. Interplay HAD to have something done for the MMO otherwise why would Beth being paying Interplay at all right?

Nope. All this does it keep interplay afloat for a couple of more years and says to people looking to vc via creative accounting "see, we can still make money" *cough* don't look at those numbers*cough*.

--"For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution; and it is always wrong." --H.L. Mencken